She laughs. "I don't believe you."
"Me?" he asks, bringing a hand to his heart. "Is it wrong to love an animal that also happens to be a symbol of freedom?"
"Now you're just making fun of me."
"Maybe a little," he says with a grin. "But is it working?"
"What, me getting closer to muzzling you?"
"No," he says quietly. "Me distracting you."
"From what?"
"Your claustrophobia."
She smiles at him gratefully. "A little," she says. "Though it's not as bad until we get up in the air."
"How come?" he asks. "Plenty of wide open spaces up there."
"But no escape route."
"Ah," he says. "So you're looking for an escape route."
Hadley nods. "Always."
"Figures," he says, sighing dramatically. "I get that from girls a lot."
She lets out a short laugh, then closes her eyes again when the plane begins to pick up speed, barreling down the runway with a rush of noise. They're tipped back in their seats as momentum gives way to gravity, the plane tilting backward until—with a final bounce of the wheels—they're set aloft like a giant metal bird.
Hadley wraps a hand around the armrest as they climb higher into the night sky, the lights below fading into pixelated grids. Her ears begin to pop as the pressure builds, and she presses her forehead against the window, dreading the moment when they'll push through the low-hanging bank of clouds and the ground will disappear beneath them, when they'll be surrounded by nothing but the vast and endless sky.
Out the window, the outlines of parking lots and housing developments are growing distant as everything starts to blend together. Hadley watches the world shift and blur into new shapes, the streetlamps with their yellow-orange glow, the long ribbons of highway. She sits up straighter, her forehead cool against the Plexiglas as she strains to keep sight of it all. What she fears isn't flying so much as being set adrift. But for now, they're still low enough to see the lit windows of the buildings below. For now, Oliver is beside her, keeping the clouds at bay.
5
10:36 PM Eastern Standard Time
3:36 AM Greenwich Mean Time
They've been in the air only a few minutes when Oliver seems to decide it's safe to speak to her again. At the sound of his voice near her ear, Hadley feels something inside of her loosening, and she unclenches her hands one finger at a time.
"Once," he says, "I was flying to California on the Fourth of July."
She turns her head, just slightly.
"It was a clear night, and you could see all the little fireworks displays along the way, these tiny flares going off below, one town after another."
Hadley leans to the window again, her heart pounding as she stares at the emptiness below, the sheer nothingness of it all. She closes her eyes and tries to imagine fireworks instead.
"If you didn't know what they were, it probably would've looked terrifying, but from up above they were sort of pretty, just really silent and small. It was hard to imagine they were the same huge explosions you see from the ground." He pauses for a moment. "I suppose it's all a matter of perspective."
She twists toward him again, searching his face. "Is that supposed to help?" she asks, though not unkindly. She's simply trying to find the lesson in the story.
